Bile Ratha

Bile Ratha is the Celtic version of the tree of life, a motif found in many mythologies such as the Norse Yggdrasil and the Upanishads Universal Tree. It is associated with the ancient mating of heaven and earth - the Great Marriage. The World Tree links humanity to the cosmos as its roots press toward earth's axis and its branches reach toward heaven.

The Celts regarded Bile Ratha as the symbol for the center of the universe, the axis mundi, which is also a place of entrance to the Otherworld.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Carl Jung's theory on the collective unconscious and ancestral memory seems to explain in a rather simple and beautiful way things that have been bouncing around in my brain. Also, it meets Dirac's standards of beauty in underlying principle.

The Collective Unconscious -

"This part of the human psyche represents a storehouse of memories of the part of both the human and the animal race. This collective unconscious also represents wisdom and self-knowledge at the deepest level."

Carl Jung spoke of archetypes as recognizable symbols that are passed down collectively from generation to generation. These archetypes are shared knowledge and connection among the whole human race (like spirals), but I say it is more than that.

Within each of our minds is a history, a repository of knowledge that has been passed on to us individually from our direct ancestors. Dr. Darold Treffert calls it "inherited knowledge." Marshall Nirenberg, in 1968, wrote a paper on what could possibly be actual DNA/RNA mechanisms for what he calls “Genetic Memory.”

Perhaps we are able to "remember" things genetically from this inherited storehouse, which is why certain music thrills and touches us, or why we long for things we've never actually known, or why we feel a deep and unfathomable connection to a place we've never been.

I do think, down the long corridor of birth, and death, and recollection, there are ancestral memories stronger in some than in others. Perhaps the imprinting from certain antecedents can be dominant, just like a dominant genetic trait will always rise to the top.

9 comments:

I personally have experienced traits and tendencies for as long as I can remember that lead me to believe that ancestral memory has to be valid. It's the only explanation that I have come across that makes sense...

I have recently found an old family tree from Norway. With help from the internet I have found hundreds of ancestors. Many of these people lived in a strange place, like the Orkney islands, places that I have always had a connection with, but not known why, pieces seem to be fitting together..../

I had a dream about a woman and her lover in which she mentioned his name. I looked up the name and recently after drawing up my family tree, I found out that the name from the dream was actually one of my ancestors, and their story was exactly the way I had dreamt it.

You appear to be catching substance with out diving into the fantasy land of the new age. It is very difficult at times to discern what is real and what is not. The difference can be a very thin line. Keep going.

I just think there's so much that we don't understand still about *everything*, but our 21st century mind-set has made us believe that we're no longer in the dark ages of scientific knowledge. It's easier for us to say things like 98% of our DNA is junk, than to admit that we really have no idea what its purpose is.

In any case, it's fun to think about and talk about. Thanks everyone for sharing your great comments!

I have had two vivid memories as long as I can remember. Even as a small child, these memories or recollections were as real to me as the present. In one, I am a child walking along a rocky cliff above the ocean. Its dark, and above me is a rock house with a dim glow from a window. The smell of firewood burning in the wind is haunting...I recently saw a picture from Scotland...it was a rocky trail along a cliff above the ocean. At the top of the trail was a rock house. It took my breath away. I knew what was beyond the view of the camera lens. I've never been to Scotland, but it calls to me.

Proust

"...like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinching, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

Shadow-of-Yggdrasil

by Vegvisir

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

Albert Einstein--

Proust

Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees.

Followers

Grow your roots deep and reach for the stars beloved

A man's character is his fate.

--Heraclitus, 540 BC - 480 BC

Lady of the Lake

Moon over Stonehenge

Tree of Life

by Jen Delthyn

Make your nest in the tree of life!

Celtic Cross at dawn

Ogham Writing

Over 300 Ogham stones have been found in Ireland, mainly concentrated in the S.W. of Ireland. A few isolated examples have been identified in other parts of Ireland, Wale, and the Isle of Man.

Ogham is the earliest known system of writing in Irish. It consists of an alphabet of originally 20 later 25 letters, which are incised along the edge of a stone pillar. The language used is Primitive Irish with early Latin influences. The inscriptions commemorate or record the name of a person and his kinship, X son of Y. The stones are generally dated from 4th- 7th Centuries, the period of transition from paganism to Christianity in Ireland.

It has a flat face, a broken top and simple carved crosses inside a circle, the Ogham marks are down either edge.